The present invention relates to communications services bidding exchanges, and particularly relates to facilitating the selection and purchase of communications network services through the bidding exchange.
Trading exchanges allow exchange participants to buy and sell goods and services in a competitive marketplace. Typically, sellers of like goods or services compete with each other on price, availability, or other criteria, allowing buyers within the exchange to buy from the seller most closely meeting their needs.
A given trading exchange generally focuses on related types of goods or services, such as commodities (e.g., grain, oil), or equities (e.g., publicly traded stocks). Extending the trading exchange model to other industries can yield cost and service benefits, but oftentimes entails difficulties in terms of enabling efficient and reliable buying and selling when the traded commodity is intangible. For example, as communications systems evolve into distributed, high-bandwidth networks, service providers and their customers have increasingly come to view bandwidth itself as a xe2x80x9ccommodity.xe2x80x9d Indeed, there are limited examples of trading exchanges focused on buying and selling communications network services.
However, buying and selling communications services in a trading exchange entails complications commensurate with the complexity of the underlying network systems on which the services offered through the exchange are based. To realize full benefit from the exchange (e.g., lowest cost, best service, etc.), buyers should have an opportunity to consider the full range of possibilities available through the exchange for fulfilling their communications service needs.
Consider a scenario in which a buyer wishes to reserve data carrying capacity between first and second cities over a desired period. Depending upon the communications network facilities affiliated with the exchange, there may be a substantial number of possibilities for interconnecting the first and second city during the desired period. Further complicating the buyer""s task, no single service provider operating in the exchange may offer a seamless network connection between the two cities. Thus, the buyer""s challenge becomes that of assembling an ad hoc network connection between the first and second cities from a potentially large pool of communications network resources. The ad hoc network connection (path) will oftentimes include multiple network segments from different service providers affiliated with the exchange.
If a communications service trading exchange automated the process of identifying potential network paths assembled from the pool of network resources available through the exchange, buyers operating in the exchange would be relieved of a substantial burden. Ideally, buyers could choose reduced automation such that all or a portion of the ad hoc network could be manually selected, thus preserving buyers"" freedom to control the selection process. Further, this automated network building functionality should have the ability to consider multiple buyer criteria, such as cost, performance, and connection topology when selecting network paths for the buyer.
The network building system of the present invention works within a communications service bidding exchange to aid buyers in identifying and reserving data, bandwidth, or wavelength capacities, among other resources, on network facilities associated with the exchange. The exchange allows buyers to reserve usage privileges on network segments operated by service providers affiliated with the exchange. A number of geographically disperse hubs affiliated with the exchange are interconnected by these network segments. Multiple network segments from different service providers may interconnect any two hubs. When a buyer needs to reserve communications capacity between two or more of the hubs, the network building system assists the buyer in identifying the combination of network segments interconnecting the hubs of interest, including any intervening hubs, that best fulfills their particular criteria. A given combination of network segments interconnecting any of the hubs of interest is termed a xe2x80x9cnetwork path.xe2x80x9d A network path may include one or more individual network segments.
The network building system may operate automatically, operating without buyer interaction to select a combination of network segments (network path) meeting the buyer""s criteria. In this mode, the network building system may be transparent to the buyer, with the buyer simply providing their selection criteria to the exchange and receiving a proposed network path in response. Alternatively, the buyer may interact with the network building system to hand pick individual network segments. This manual aspect of operation may be intermingled with automatic selection such that some network segments are hand picked by the buyer and others automatically selected by the network building system. Even with manual operations, the network building system can reduce selection complexity for the buyer by providing the buyer with a reduced set of network segment choices based on the buyer""s criteria.
Buyers"" criteria may define specific qualifications used by the network building system to identify a suitable network path. These qualifications influence the network segments and supporting hubs selected by the network building system. For example, a buyer may specify a specific data capacity or a type of network segment and provide needed dates for usage. The network building system in this instance might simply select the network path and hubs available during the requested dates that best meet the buyer""s specific criteria. However, the network building system also provides enhanced selection functionality by translating broad buyer criteria into specific network path requirements.
For example, the buyer may indicate to the exchange the desire to reserve video data carrying capacity between a given pair of hubs for a given range of dates. In this instance, the network building system may use stored information regarding the particular performance needs of video transmission to select an optimal network path interconnecting suitable hubs relevant to the buyer""s needs, such as geographic locations and performance requirements.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.